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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed.

"Companies are hunting for lithium near Moab, Utah." "White Oil, Oro Blanco, Extraterrestrial Gold: lithium, the lightweight element key to rechargeable batteries, has recently acquired a slew of hyperbolic nicknames. As the demand for electric cars, laptops and smartphones has surged, the search is on for more domestic sources of this energy-critical element."

"SAND SPRINGS, Mont. — In this part of Montana’s rugged eastern prairie, Erwin Weder and the other ranchers and cowboys are not used to feeling kicked around. But as Weder drives his pickup truck onto a bluff to gaze out over “Big Sky Country,” he feels a bit defeated."

"The island of Guam made rare headlines this week when North Korea, responding to blustery language from President Trump, threatened to fire four ballistic missiles into waters near the American territory’s shores. ... Scientists in Guam, however, say they have at least one other major threat in mind: climate change."

"The Trump administration has collected 60 percent less from civil penalties for environmental wrongdoing than the administrations of presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton did on average in their first six months in office."

"New Orleans is under a state of emergency Thursday (Aug. 10) as officials work to bring back online a turbine that supplies power to the city's drainage pump system in the face of expected thunderstorms. It's the latest headline in a weekend of miscommunications from city officials after severe flooding seeped into thousands of homes, business and cars over the weekend."

"The federal government has reached an agreement with local Inuit that will lead to the protection and management of a massive swath of northern sea in one of the most ecologically sensitive regions of the Canadian Arctic."

"The US government’s withdrawal from dealing with, or even acknowledging, climate change may have provoked widespread opprobrium, but for Alaskan communities at risk of toppling into the sea, the risks are rather more personal."

"Monsanto continued to produce and sell toxic industrial chemicals known as PCBs for eight years after learning that they posed hazards to public health and the environment, according to legal analysis of documents put online in a vast searchable archive."

"While the economy in Texas has boomed over the last 20 years, along the border with Mexico about a half million people live in clusters of cinderblock dwellings, home-built shacks, dilapidated trailers and small houses."

"By a slow slide of river deep in Washington’s wolf country, Robert Wielgus laughs at the tattoo on his arm of Four Claws, the grizzly that almost killed him. “I would rather face charging grizzly bears trying to kill me than politicians and university administrators, because it is over quickly,” said Wielgus, director of the Large Carnivore Conservation Lab at Washington State University."